Treemap Visuals

Treemap visuals display hierarchical data as a set of nested rectangles.

Each "branch" of the tree is a rectangle that corresponds to a particular dimension, with smaller rectangles that represent secondary dimensions. All rectangle areas are proportional to the aggregate measure that corresponds to the dimension.

Using color and size dimensions in the tree structure often brings to light new insights and correspondence patterns. Because of the highly efficient use of space, treemaps legibly display very large number of items simultaneously.

We are working with dataset NYC Taxi Trips, based on the data in the file ny-trips.csv.

For an overview of shelves that specify this visual, see Shelves for Treemap Visuals.

  1. Start a new visual based on dataset NYC Taxi Trips; see Creating Visuals.
  2. In the visuals menu, find and click Treemap.

    selecting treemap chart type
  3. Note that the shelves of the visual changed. They are now Dimensions, Measures, Tooltips, X Trellis, Y Trellis, and Filters.

    The mandatory shelves are:

    • Dimensions: specify one or two dimensions to define the branches and leaf nodes of the treemap.
    • Measure: specifies one measurement that determines the area of the leaf node.
    shelves of treemap visual type
  4. Populate the shelves from the available fields (Dimensions, Measures, and so on) in the Data menu.

    • Under Dimensions, select Pickup Boro and Pickup Neighborhood, and add them to the Dimensions shelf, in that order.
    • Under Measures, select Record Count and add it to the Measures shelf.
  5. Click Refresh Visual.

  6. The new treemap visual appears.

  7. Change the title to NYC Taxi - Treemap.

    • Click (pencil icon) next to the title of the visualization to edit it, and enter the new name.

    • [Optional] Click (pencil icon) below the title of the visualization to add a brief description of the visual.

  8. At the top left corner of the Visual Designer, click Save.

    clicking to save
  9. At the top left corner of the Visual Designer, click Close.

To adjust the treemap display, check all the available settings for this visual.